


Doctor, Detective and Sons

by Tawabids



Series: Doctor, Detective and Sons [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And then it was a serious emotional study of two people falling out of love, And then it was curtainfic, But I think the ending counts as happy, Domestic, In the beginning this was crack, Kidfic, M/M, Mpreg, Raising a family while skint isn't easy, That's like three fics in one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock have three children and a lot of problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. colic

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written - oh my God, sixteen months ago? - for a prompt [here at the Sherlock BBC kink community](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/9640.html?thread=45480104). The original prompt can be summarised as, 'kidfic where one of them isn't happy and the sacrifices and stresses of family are tearing their relationship apart.' Because the original was written between seasons, some of it got Jossed by new info in season 2 - most particularly that Lestrade's first name was revealed as _Greg_. However, I've decided to leave Geoffrey's name as it stands. If you like, you can assume that Sherlock just got Lestrade's first name wrong when he was writing the birth certificate and John didn't notice until it was too late.
> 
> There is a Chinese translation of the fic [here at the 221dnet forums](http://221dnet.211.30i.cn/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=326&extra=&page=1) (requires a login), by the amazing Maruo. 
> 
> There is also some beautiful art [here by Calita](http://calita89.tumblr.com/post/19127522120/http-sherlockbbc-fic-livejournal-com-9640-html-th)  
> and [here in a collection by 标准间住户](http://221dnet.211.30i.cn/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=141&extra=&page=1) (at 22dnet, so also requires a login).

When magic came into the world, an awful lot of things changed. There were accountants who woke up one moon to discover they were werewolves and politicians forced to admit to their constituents that they might be witches. There were youths stolen by fairies and rest home patients who could read minds a thousand miles away. There was a lot of hurried legislation to write and quite a lot of marital breakdowns, but most people managed to escape with their lives relatively unchanged. 

John and Sherlock were not in the latter category. The first time John got pregnant, it was rather a shock, in fact. They had barely prepared themselves before the squalling child was delivered (six pounds one ounce) by a confused junior doctor. He was brought into the world in a bloody caesarean mess behind a curtain in a shared ward, because by the time Sherlock convinced the doctors that yes, honestly, we’ve been doing tests for sometime now and _there is a baby in there,_ it was too late to find arrange a private room. 

But, well, father and baby seemed healthy, so they took the brand new person home to Baker St and stared at it for a while. 

“He’s drowning,” Sherlock said. 

“I think he’s okay,” John frowned. He was propped up on the couch, unable to move much because of the sutures on his abdomen. 

“But there’s so much saliva,” Sherlock sounded on the verge of weeping, which Sherlock never did so perhaps it was just a cold or something. “How does he _breathe?”_

The baby began to cry. It seemed evident that he was upset about not having a fully-developed sentience and theory of mind yet, so Sherlock tried patting the back of his hand in the hope of consoling him. Sherlock could not believe how small it was. The pad of his index finger was as large as the baby’s palm. 

“Oh, God,” John said. “Formula. We haven’t got any formula. How did we not think of that?”

They rushed out with John wincing every step and the baby in a makeshift sling made out of Sherlock’s best silk scarf. There was a Tesco open late and a stocky checkout woman with bags under her eyes who refused to speak to them. Sherlock paid for nappies and wipes with his credit card and called John ‘sweetheart’ just to inflame the checkout woman. She crossed herself as they pushed the trolley away, with the baby snuggled in a nest made of John’s navy-blue jersey and Sherlock’s second-best wool scarf. Both would be urinated on a few minutes later.

They called him Geoffrey, because Lestrade was the only person both of them agreed that they liked and neither of them could stand the pink and blue websites with lists of baby names. On the birth certificate, they wrote ‘unknown’ under ‘mother’. 

Sherlock survived the first few months on two hours sleep a night. John did less well, even after he managed to convince the hospital to give him maternity leave for a year. Bringing Geoffrey to crime scenes proved nigh impossible. Either he was crying too much or, when he was not crying, Sherlock became distracted at inopportune moments and wanted to check that Geoffrey was still breathing. John had to stay at home most days watching the baby while Sherlock went out solving crimes and then coming home and complaining because John hadn't been there to talk to.

"I can't leave Geoffrey home alone."

"Why not? Mrs Hudson can check on him every now and then."

"He's fragile. He needs constant attention."

"He's a Holmes! We are not fragile. We're very independent."

"He's a Holmes-Watson. _And he's a month old."_

Money got tighter, but Sherlock procured what donations he could from private clients. He got very angry when John started calling them clients.

“Makes me sound like a prostitute,” he snarled.

“Stop grizzling. You had _better_ take up bloody street-walking if we need the money,” John snapped, nursing Geoffrey in the crook of his arm. They were both at the ends of their tethers, in each other’s hair, chomping at the bit, driving each other round the bend, and every other proverb in between. Proverbs were _made_ for domestic difficulties like this.

Sherlock stormed off, slamming his bedroom door, and Geoffrey began to howl. John couldn’t get him to stop until Sherlock reappeared like a phantasm at his elbow, his hair askew. Together they hummed the choruses of various show tunes (alternating to a new one as soon as one of them forget the rest of the melody) until the baby settled into weepy hiccoughs. 

\---

“I thought you’d find this intolerable,” John said one night, when Geoffrey had been blessedly napping for a miraculous two whole hours. His colic was beginning to clear and they’d been recommended a wonderful nappy rash cream: they were both gasping at the breathing space they knew would end as soon as the first tooth started coming through. 

Sherlock was updating his website to tell his readers they should stop sending bubbly blue ‘Congratulations!’ cards or he would hunt down each and every single one of them and personally shove their respective Hallmarks down their throats. 

“I find almost every person I meet to be irritating, unintelligent, illogical in their behaviour and quite often rather smelly,” Sherlock said without looking up from the laptop screen. “Knowing the spawn is from my own loins and likely to improve with patience is a pleasant change.”

John thought about this for a moment, wrapping his hands around his fresh cup of tea, then asked, “Is that your way of saying you quite like being a dad?”

“All I’m saying is that I believe our son is going to make the world a bit less boring,” Sherlock replied, and then paused in his typing. “Actually, I think he already has. From my perspective.”

John pecked Sherlock on the top of his head, “He loves you too,” he smiled into Sherlock’s thick curls. 

As John headed off to Sherlock’s bedroom to catch a few winks of sleep (they were slowly setting up the upstairs as a nursery), Sherlock called after him, “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look into this magical male contraceptive they’ve developed.”

“Tell me about it tomorrow,” John yawned, shutting the door as quietly as possible to keep from waking Geoffrey up.

\---

A few weeks later, Geoffrey was just hitting six months and beginning to roll over on his own and make facial expressions like a real person. One morning in a Wandsworth park, Sherlock was crouched over a corpse with Lestrade looking over his shoulder when he heard Donovan announce, “Oi, Freak-Junior approaching at seven o’clock.” 

Sherlock growled and was very close to actually saying something unpleasant to Sally (he considered the sort of things he usually said to her to be merely _harsh truths_ ) when he saw the look on John’s face and stood up.

“What’s wrong? Is Geoffrey sick?” 

(Lestrade suddenly flushed from his neck to his eyeballs and cleared his throat at the sky, as he did every _single_ time Geoffrey was mentioned in his presence).

John was lugging the baby in a carrier by his side, and shook his head. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Go ahead,” Sherlock frowned, indicating the assembled forensic team as if they were merely ornamental hedges rather than ravenous rumour-machines. 

“In private,” John said through gritted teeth.

“But the rain’s not going to keep for more than a few more minutes, and I need to see if there’s any blood on the bike stands to confirm my theory,” Sherlock said briskly. “What is it?”

John took two rapid breaths as if preparing himself to plunge into a freezing lake, shot a glare at Lestrade and Anderson as if daring them to laugh, and then looked at Sherlock and said. “I’m pregnant. Again.”


	2. muesli

It was seven am on a Monday morning, and John was lying on his back while wide awake and thinking about leaving his partner. It was the most awful, terrible, no-good thing he could even imagine thinking about. Alright, that was an exaggeration, the idea of anyone taking away or hurting his children ranked far above ‘Leaving Sherlock’ on the list of ‘Worst Things John Could Think About’, but he’d never allowed himself to think about things like that, had he? And yet here he was, skipping right up the thinking-list (past ‘Harry Having Another Breakdown’ and ‘Sherlock Getting Arrested’ and ‘Burglaries’) to ‘Leaving Sherlock’. And he wasn’t even trying to stop himself, or telling himself not to be stupid. He was _really thinking about this._

He turned his head to look at Sherlock in the bed beside him. Sherlock slept completely silently, he always had. It was quite predatory. It made John think of owls gliding. But Sherlock still looked beautiful, icy-beautiful, snowy-beautiful, owly-beautiful. John was not going to pretend he wasn’t a lucky man to have spent the last thirteen years sleeping next to Sherlock. 

Thirteen years. Lucky John. Lucky thirteen. 

“Waaabaaa!” Hamish cried, breaking into John’s thoughts. John raised his head to see the two-year-old standing in his crib with his hands locked over the top railing, shaking it impatiently. “DAAAAAD.”

“Sh, sh,” John managed to flip back the bedcovers on his side and slip his feet onto the floor without shaking the rickety bed too much. It was an antique that had come with the flat. They were always meaning to replace it when they had the cash, but the boys grew out of their clothes and shoes much faster than John and Sherlock were growing out of their bed, so the spare money never eventuated. John padded across the carpet and lifted Hamish over the edge of the crib, settling him onto his hip. 

“Breakfast,” Hamish said sternly, his fists clutching at John’s worn T-shirt. He bumped his head against John’s shoulder. 

“Alright, little man. Just don’t wake Daddy,” John hummed to him and glanced back at the sound of Sherlock snorting in his sleep. But Sherlock just wriggled into the middle of the bed to take advantage of the extra space and sunk deeper into dreamland. He’d come home after two that morning when he’d finished a case, and John needed him to sleep as long as he could. He knew Sherlock hadn’t gone to bed once in the last three days, he had been so consumed by his latest mystery. Now that it was over, sleep-deprivation and boredom would rapidly set in and he would need almost as much care as his two-year-old son. John didn’t want to deal with that just yet.

He tucked Hamish into his high chair and cleared the newspapers and boxes of shampoo samples (something to do with the latest case; Sherlock had explained it to him, but John was too busy clipping Hamish’s toenails to pay attention) off the kitchen table. He set out a selection of cereals, milk and four glasses of cordial. 

“Spoon,” Hamish demanded, leaning as far as he could out of the chair. He was going to be too big for it soon enough, just like he was already too big for his crib, and John had no idea what they were going to do about the latter. There was no more room in the upstairs bedroom for a third bed. They’d have to buy bunks, and neither Murray nor the budget were going to be happy about that.

“Just a minute,” John rubbed Hamish on the top of his downy head. “I’ll get your brothers, then you can start.” He refused to let Hamish eat unsupervised. Murray had once started choking because Sherlock wasn’t watching him, and John still shuddered at the memory of rushing in and flipping the then-toddler upside down to whack his back until he started breathing again. He had no intention of ever letting Hamish get into that situation.

John padded upstairs, pursued by the hungry cry of, “DAAAAAD,” from his youngest. He knocked on the door to the upstairs bedroom – plastered with posters of dinosaurs (with scientifically correct names), next to pamphlets about various classical music concerts – and stuck his head inside. The dark-curtained room was lifeless and smelled of unwashed socks and sandwich crusts going mouldy under beds.

“Breakfast,” he said. “Ups-y-daisy.”

Murray (age ten, responsible for the dinosaurs) grunted and wriggled deeper into his blankets. Geoffrey (almost twelve, the music obsessive) didn’t even make a sound. 

“Don’t make me come in there,” warned John. He knew they’d both been up late reading the night before. He’d seen the light from the bottom of the stairs, but they kept turning out the lamp and pretending to be fast asleep as soon as they heard his footsteps on the landing.

He’d tried to stop them doing it. It made them grumpy and hard to get to school on time. But Sherlock actively encouraged their nocturnal behaviour whenever John tried to scold the boys over dinner. He’d even gone so far as to say, “What are they going to learn from school, anyway? They’d do better to spend their time reading,” the last time John brought it up. 

John had pulled him into the kitchen after that, once the boys were all in bed. “You can’t tell them things like that. It’s good for them to go to school.”

“I don’t see why,” Sherlock muttered. “If you mean it’s good for them to be indoctrinated with the brainless patterns of a homogenous middle-class lifestyle—“

“They need to have friends. They need to have _social skills.”_

“Why? Neither one ever did me any good.”

That, John wanted to say, is a total lie. He only stayed quiet because he was too tired for a row. 

John had no idea whether any of his three boys were likely to end up as clever as their other father, though Geoffrey and Murray were already far above average at every school subject. Even if they had inherited every ounce of Sherlock’s potential they were never going to have the same comfortable range of opportunities: unlike the senior Holmes’, Sherlock and John could not afford public school, and scrounged even to pay for such intellectual pursuits as Geoffrey’s violin and saxophone lessons. Just last year, Sherlock had sold two of his best suits on the internet in order to pay the fee for Murray’s school camp to an archaeological dig, and John could not remember the last time they’d had the money for new linen or real butter. When John had started working again it had been easier, but then surprise! Hamish had come along and they were back to relying on the erratic and often scarce income from Sherlock’s private cases. 

Not that John would give up Hamish for anything. When you lived in a house of budding geniuses and their genius father, spending time with a two year old was actually something of a mental relief. 

Right now, however, both his little geniuses were clearly not intending to switch on their brains. John crouched over Murray, running his fingers through his middle son’s dark curls, which were all that could be seen above his duvet. “Come on. Up you get.”

Murray made a noise that might have been a drawn-out ‘no’ and John sighed. “Don’t make me.”

“Sooood ooooff,” Murray groaned.

“Fine. I warned you,” John grabbed the blankets and whipped them off into a scrunched pile at the end of Murray’s bed. The boy clutched his pillow and hissed at his father from under the arm he’d thrown across his eyes. John left him to curl up in his brontosaurus-patterned pajamas until the cold got too much and he gave up on sleep. He went to disturb Geoffrey.

“I’m awake,” Geoffrey mumbled as John leaned over his bed. “I don’t feel well.”

“Sick or achy?” John asked, putting his hand on Geoffrey’s forehead. It was soft with morning damp, but not hot to the touch. “You don’t feel feverish. When did it start?”

“Kept waking up in the night. Felt gross,” Geoffrey responded unhelpfully. He rolled over to peer at his father from under a soft, blondish fringe that needed trimming. Like his brother, he had inherited Sherlock’s height, but unlike Murray, he mostly had John's colours. He often reminded John of Harry, especially first thing in the morning.

“I’ll get the thermometer.”

“How come Geoff gets to stay in bed?” Murray whined, now sitting on the edge of his mattress and rubbing his eyes. 

“Because Dad’s the doctor. Come on, hup,” John picked Murray up under the arms and set him on his feet. Murray was still light enough for such manhandling, which John liked. Geoffrey had all too fast grown too big to carry. 

John did not tell Murray that Geoffrey got to stay in bed because if he said he was sick, he probably was. For no reason that Sherlock and John had ever been able to identify, Geoffrey had always been – to use a terribly Victorian term – a _delicate_ child. He’d picked up every illness that went around the playground, colds, chicken pox, stomach bugs, the lot, and was allergic to penicillin and just about every animal with fur. He needed a lot of wrapping up in cold weather and sunscreen in hot. Murray almost never got sick: he had once caught chicken pox from his brother but recovered before Geoffrey was even out of bed. (He also had a tendency to eat too much sugar and then throw up at birthday parties, but John suspected that was more a character flaw than an immunological problem.)

By the time he managed to wrestle his middle son downstairs, Hamish was kicking his feet against the table and grizzling. 

“I know, I know,” John sighed, scrambling to pour the two-year-old a bowl of muesli (he wasn’t old enough yet to demand anything less healthy) and help Hamish steer the first spoonful into his mouth. “Murray, watch your brother while he’s eating, yell if he needs me.”

“We’re out of cocoa pops,” Murray complained, digging around in the cutlery drawer for his favourite spoon (a prized gift from Uncle Mycroft last Christmas, it had all eight planets etched on the handle). He was making a racket, and John was worried it was going to wake Sherlock. He leaned over and found the planet-spoon for Murray, putting it into his hand.

“I’m going shopping today. Have wheaties. Only two teaspoons of sugar.”

He headed for the bathroom, found the thermometer and trudged back up to check Geoffrey’s temperature. To his relief, his eldest clocked in at precisely 37°C. 

“Come down and have something to eat, you might feel better by the time you get to school,” John suggested softly. Geoffrey was pressing the buttons on the watch on John’s wrist, and though he didn’t seem convinced of his father’s diagnosis, he gave a resigned nod. 

With the three children around the breakfast table at last, John took the fourth seat and polished off the last three wheaties in the box. He added them to a shopping list in his head, under cocoa pops and full-grain bread, and wondered if Sherlock had a cheque from the case he’d completed last night squirreled away in one of his pockets. Probably worth looking for. John was pretty sure there wasn’t more than thirty pounds in their shared spending account, and he didn’t want to dip into their savings just to buy groceries. He’d cash the cheque at the bank on the way to the supermarket and buy the biggest box of cocoa pops in the store. 

It took half an hour to get the boys into their uniforms and Hamish into warm clothes, their schoolbags packed – books, pencil cases, Geoffrey’s sheet music, the lunches John had made the night before (fruit, tomato sandwiches and wholemeal crackers), raincoats – and their shoes on at last. Geoffrey was still looking a little worse for wear.

“Go to the office and get them to call me if you feel too sick to get through day, okay?” John put his hand on his eldest’s head as he went to get the stroller and Geoffrey nodded.

John quietly opened the door to his bedroom and shut it quickly behind him before the sound of Murray galumphing upstairs to fetch his scarf woke Sherlock up. His partner was still asleep on his stomach, and John carefully pulled the stroller out from under the bed without disturbing him. Sherlock had dumped his clothes on the floor when he’d come home the night before; John searched them as quickly as he could and pumped his fist in the air when he found a wrinkled cheque in the breast pocket of Sherlock’s jacket. Cocoa pops for everyone tomorrow. He found his wallet on the bedside table and tucked the cheque into it.

“John?” Sherlock asked sleepily. He had raised his head and was blinking at his partner. His eyes were black in the unlit bedroom. “What time is it?”

“Just past eight. Have a lie-in, I’m taking the wolf pack to school,” John whispered. “I took your cheque, too. Groceries.”

“I’ll-get-groceries,” Sherlock said, though the way he mumbled it into his pillow it came out sounding like a single word in some foreign language. 

“It’s okay, I need to take Hamish to the park anyway.”

“I’ll-take-Hamish-park,” Sherlock said in the same barely-intelligible mumble.

John felt a flare of irritation light up in the base of his brain. Sherlock had spent all weekend lying around the flat or disappearing without a word, playing his consulting detective games and not taking the older boys off John’s hands for even an hour, and when John finally got to spend some time alone with Hamish, suddenly Sherlock wanted in? John missed running around London dodging bullets so sharply sometimes that it felt like a toothache, but he was the dad-at-home now. He'd made that choice for the boys' sake. Sherlock couldn't just take over the role whenever he wanted. 

Sometimes John thought Sherlock spoiled Murray and Geoffrey far too much. John always, _always_ had to play the bad guy as soon as it was time for bed or Murray’s footy practise or Geoffrey was throwing a fit because he had to share the laptop with his younger brother. Sherlock was always telling them how clever and talented they were while John was the one who had to get them to finish their homework or do the dishes or explain why they didn’t own a television (it had been something their fathers had decided together soon after Geoffrey was born, but Sherlock rarely bothered to back him up on it). Why couldn’t John have just _one_ son who still looked at him like he was the smartest person in the world? Just for a few more years? 

“Just get some rest. You can pick the cubs up from school if you’re awake by then,” John said. 

Thankfully for the ember of rage that was glowing brighter and brighter in the hearth of John’s skull, Sherlock rolled over and mumbled, “Sure.” John got out of the bedroom as quick as he could before he thought any more about that terrible, no-good thing he’d been thinking this morning.

“Why can’t we have phones?” Murray called as he returned. “If we had phones Geoff could just text you when he’s sick. Way easier.”

“You’re not allowed phones in class,” John replied, hefting the stroller under one arm and holding out his other hand for Hamish. “I know you. You’d be on the web all day instead of listening to your teachers.”

“So?” Murray insisted as he followed Geoffrey down the stairs, John and Hamish making slow progress at the rear. “Daddy says the teachers are wrong about almost everything. I could check their lessons as I go.”

“Teachers are wrong _sometimes_ , but you should to be learning critical thinking, not getting all your facts from Wikipedia,” John replied. They passed Mrs. Hudson’s open door and John waved through it. Their landlady, still in an ancient dressing gown, waved back over her morning paper. Lucky for some. 

“What’s critical thinking?” Murray demanded.

“Yay! Sunny!” Hamish cheered as they got out onto the street. It was indeed a beautiful day, and John grinned down at Murray, dousing the angry ember and wondering why on earth he had spent the morning thinking no-good, horrible thoughts about leaving Sherlock. He must be mad. There was no such thing as a perfect family, but come on, theirs had to be pretty close.

“Ask your teachers,” he told his middle son. “Hamish, get back here! No running off!”


	3. A&E

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Calita](http://calita89.tumblr.com) has given me permission to post her art of the three boys! The original link for reblogging is [here](http://calita89.tumblr.com/post/19127522120/http-sherlockbbc-fic-livejournal-com-9640-html-th). I love this pic, she got their personalities perfectly! The ages are post two years after most of this fic takes place.

[](http://tinypic.com?ref=30athu1)

 

John pushed the trolley out into the carpark with Hamish in the baby seat making what John assumed were aeroplane noises (sometimes he suspected Hamish had inherited Sherlock's queer imagination). He was just pausing at the painted border that said, ‘TROLLEYS WILL LOCK IF TAKEN BEYOND THIS LINE’ when an unfamiliar voice called his name.

“John!” a woman was waving to him through the open driver’s-seat window of a semi-new hybrid. “Hello!”

John straightened up. Hamish followed his eyeline curiously and then, seeing nothing exciting enough to hold his attention, flapped his arms and continued with his aeroplane noises. “Sarah,” John recognised her at last and raised his hand. “Good to see you!”

Sarah glanced around guiltily and then pulled into the empty handicapped park right beside the John. She leaned out the window. “How you doing, old boy?” 

“Great, generally speaking.”

She was looking much younger and more carefree than seemed fair, given he hadn’t seen her since he’d left work at the hospital. Her eyes alighted on Hamish and she beamed. “Who’s this little man? Hello!”

“Hello!” Hamish waved both arms enthusiastically. “Hello!”

“We should catch up, mate. This is destiny. I never usually shop here, I was just picking up these particular chocolates that Anton fancies, they don’t sell them at our local. Are you in a rush?”

“Just thinking about bus timetables,” John answered. He got a cab sometimes, if his shoulder was feeling sore, but mostly you could get three bags hooked onto the stroller and another one or two hanging off your arms. 

“What? Don’t be silly, I’ll give you a ride!” Sarah popped the boot and got out at once. She moved in to embrace him quickly, before John detected the ambush. She was still skinny as ever, lucky dame. He felt a bit embarrassed standing there in his second-choice jacket because Hamish wiped bolognaise all over the first one yesterday. 

“No, no I can’t, I don’t even have a car seat for Hamish—”

“I insist,” Sarah said in the same tone she used to use to tell the interns not to slack off on their rounds. “Don’t worry, I’ve got mine in the boot,” She picked up two of his bags and began putting them into the car. When she emerged from the boot she was carrying a pink and yellow plastic car seat. He took it and self-consciously began to strap it into the back of her car, which smelled of air freshener and clean towels. She had loaded all his groceries by the time he'd figured it out. He and Sherlock had never owned a car or the corresponding toddler seat, though on occasion he had gone to crime scenes and Lestrade had rustled up a battered old seat they kept at the station. 

Sure enough, when John sat Hamish in the seat and strapped him down, Hamish asked brightly, “Dad see policemen?” and John couldn’t control his giggling for a moment. Sarah joined in, though he wasn’t sure whether she got the joke.

“So you’ve got at least one, I presume,” John asked as they pulled out of the car park. 

“Yup, two young ladies. Or terrors, depending on the day,” she gave him the commiserating look that all parents shared like a secret code. “You won’t have met my husband, will you? He’s in radiology, but he didn’t start until after you’d left, I think. Where are we going, by the way?”

“Baker Street, same old.”

She gaped at him and then quickly returned her eyes to the road. “You’re joking! You mean, you and Sherlock…?”

“Yup,” he tensed.

But Sarah only laughed joyfully. “That’s lovely, that is. Twenty-first century romance. Guess I never stood a chance, aye?” she elbowed him and glanced in the rear-view mirror at the toddler. “Must be cramped, though? Three of you, in that scummy, wee flat?”

“Er,” John looked out the window. “Five, actually. We’ve got two older boys as well.”

“No way!” she eased the car around a left turn. “Why don’t you get something bigger?”

“We like it there. And wouldn’t want the wolf pack to have to move school.”

Sarah didn’t answer, and he waited for that tone, that tone that almost everybody with kids had (heck, he’d probably used it himself on occasion), the tone that said, _If you just listen to my advice, I’ll put you right._ John got that tone far too often, especially from people who had very strong opinions about children needing mothers. But after a moment Sarah said, “You know what? You should come round tonight. Dinner at mine. I’ve got the afternoon off and Anton loves new people, you really should.”

He automatically started to form a refusal, but then he decided he was being ridiculous. He’d always got on well with Sarah, even after they’d amicably agreed that they weren’t meant for each other. “I’d love to, if it’s not any trouble.”

“Of course not! I want to meet your boys. Your ‘wolf pack’, ha, that’s brilliant. Let’s say seven-thirty?”

“It’s a date,” he couldn’t help smiling. He’d spent so long socialising with children or corpses, it _would_ be good to have a night out. 

“Great. If you bring a dessert I’ll sort everything else.”

She spent the rest of the drive interrogating John about where he’d been working for the past ten years. She helped him heft the bags into the front hall and then took off in her beautiful car. He called up the stairs for Sherlock to come and help him with the groceries, but Sherlock was still asleep. John sighed and managed the whole lot on his own.

\---

Sarah’s husband was German, and locked eyes intensely with whomever he was speaking to. He had cooked for eight and by his tone and stiff shoulders when he shook John’s hand, was annoyed to welcome only John and Hamish into the house. John apologised profusely, explaining that Sherlock worked odd hours and their eldest was sick with some kind of cold.

It was mostly all true. Even if the real reason Sherlock hadn’t come was because, in his own words, “I can’t stand couples. How can _you?_ Every pair is like a new breed of the noble savage cliché in a penny dreadful, yabbering to each other in made-up pygmy and then alternatively fawning and trying to stab the sensible characters in the back.”

“I’m pretty sure Sarah and Anton speak English,” John said.

“Even worse. I’ll only say something rude and then they’ll hate you,” Sherlock was slumped on the couch with his forearm over his eyes. He was dressed impeccably (he had come around in time to pick the boys up), but had barely moved in hours and only talked in elaborate metaphors, mostly to complain. He was always like this after a particularly difficult case. Knowing it would pass in a couple of days didn’t make him any easier to deal with now. 

“Fine, you can make yourself toast for dinner. Are you coming, Geoff?”

Geoffrey coughed into his elbow and looked at John with huge blue eyes. “I’m sick.”

“Alright, you’re excused. Murray?”

Murray was reading a thick pop science book about the history of human evolution, which John was convinced he didn’t understand much of, but Sherlock kept bringing texts like that home from the library. “Do I have to talk to grown-ups?” he asked without looking up from the pages.

“It’s a dinner party. Of course you have to talk to grown-ups.”

“I _hate_ talking to grown-ups. They _pat-ron-niiise_ me.”

“You don’t even know what that means.”

 _“’To take the role of a customer’,_ or in this case, _’to treat with apparent kindness betraying a feeling of superiority’,”_ Geoff reeled off at once.

“Good boy,” Sherlock smirked from behind his arm. 

“Fine,” John said. “Hamish and I will just have to eat all the yummy food on our own.” 

“Yummy!” Hamish cheered from the kitchen.

He’d felt pretty worn down by the thought of turning up at Sarah’s with only one person in tow, but the boys must have been astute enough to notice, because when he mentioned having to make a dessert they threw their weight behind him.

“What are you going to make?” Murray cried, running into the kitchen and hanging off John’s belt loops. He was by far the most proficient consumer of sugary foods, so his enthusiasm wasn’t really a surprise.

“I don’t know,” John said, shuffling to the pantry with Murray still firmly attached to him at the waist. “I can’t bake and I can’t follow a recipe, plus we’ll just have to use what ingredients we have on hand…”

Geoffrey appeared in the doorway. “I’m good at instructions. I can help.”

“Me too!” Murray yelled. “There’ll be bowls to lick at the end, right?”

John laughed. “Alright, both of you find me an easy recipe and we’ll muddle it out.”

In the end it had been cupcakes with chocolate icing, and swirls of white icing on top (Geoffrey insisted this was _artistic_ , he had seen it in a book). German Anton was clearly not impressed, but John didn’t think there was much he could have done to impress Sarah’s husband by that stage. He didn’t mind. He just enjoyed being around adults who didn’t complain in great detail about inept coroners while he was eating. Meeting Sarah’s daughters was a new experience, too. Deborah (six, in overalls and a short bob) found out he was a war vet and began asking a lot of questions about tanks and machine guns (“Anton hopes it’s a phase,” Sarah chuckled when her husband was taking their plates out, “but I doubt it,”) while Jenny (three) ran around in a fairy outfit all night trying to fly off the furniture. John hadn’t really been aware that little girls could be as pink and sparkly as they were in advertisements, but apparently it was true. Both the children took a great liking to Hamish and held his hands as they lead him around the house and showed off their bedrooms. The cupcakes turned out to be kind of dry and tasteless, but Jenny and Hamish seemed to enjoy them.

It was a funny turn of events, John thought. It seemed not so long ago, all satisfaction in his life had been gained with his hands elbow-deep in blood at the moment he knew the young soldier on his table was going to live; and then later, from the joy in Sherlock’s eyes at the moment a case was cracked; and now the moments he looked forward to were when toddlers complimented his cupcakes.

So he was, as he’d said to Sarah, feeling generally great when he said goodbye (stoutly refusing her offer of a ride home; nothing wrong with a bus even this late). Hamish fell asleep on his knee on the way, and he managed to unlock 221b and carry the two-year-old inside without waking him. Mrs Hudson was asleep too, in her big armchair in front of the fire with her door wide open, and John sneaked through and shut her door quietly before he went upstairs. 

He came in and the whole flat was dark. Murray’s face was illuminated on the sofa like a will o' wisp. He was tapping away on John’s laptop. 

“Hello, kiddo,” John whispered to him, shifting Hamish onto the other shoulder so that he could open the door to the bedroom. It was dark, too, but he found his way by feel towards the cot and put Hamish down. The toddler woke up and began to grumble. 

“Sh, sh,” John pulled a blanket across and patted him until he quietened. He went to the door and looked upstairs, but the gap under the boys’ bedroom was dark. “Sherlock,” he called. No answer. John looked over at where Murray’s attention was still buried in the computer screen. 

“Where’s the daddy at?” he asked.

Murray looked up, “He’s taken Geoff to A&E.”

“He _what?”_

“His coughing got worse. Daddy got into a fuss. Talking about _symptoms.”_

“Christ!” John fumbled for his phone, but his inbox was empty of new messages. “Well, when was this?”

“Two hours ago?” Murray checked something on the computer. “No, three. Did you bring any of those cupcakes home? I haven’t had any dinner.”

 _“Christ!”_ John repeated. He flicked on the light switches at last, and ran his hands through his hair. “Um, I’ll do you a cheese toastie. Shit,” John thumbed Sherlock’s number in and put the phone to his ear. Of course, it rung and rung and finally went to voicemail. John texted his concern and then put the phone in his pocket. 

Hamish was crying again. John went to check him first, and as he did so he heard the front door. He picked his youngest up and stood at the top of the stairs to see Sherlock and Geoffrey coming up, the latter wrapped in his father’s long, black coat.

“What happened?” John hissed. Geoffrey sniffed and went to bury his head against John’s chest. John rubbed his back and balanced Hamish with the other arm.

“Oh, he’s fine. They said it’s just a cold. I overreacted,” Sherlock said brightly. 

“No I mean _why the hell didn’t you call me?”_ John felt the heat rising in his cheeks. “You left Murray on his own! For _three hours_ , he said!”

Sherlock shrugged. “I didn’t want to butt in on your dinner. Did you have a nice night?” he added, still standing several steps down from John.

“You cannot _do_ that!” John snapped. “You can’t – didn’t you even think to take him with you?”

“Mrs Hudson’s just downstairs,” Sherlock frowned. He had that look on his face, the one he used for Anderson and really slow witnesses, that _our intellects are so distinct we might as well be speaking different languages_ look. If John’s hands hadn’t both been full of children he would have been balling his fists in Sherlock’s collar right now. 

“Mrs Hudson,” John echoed numbly. “Mrs Hudson is so deaf these days she can’t hear her kettle whistling. She’s not going to have a clue if he falls or starts a fire, or… or has an asthma attack…”

“Asthma? He doesn’t have _asthma_ ,” Sherlock’s features crinkled up in exasperation.

“A seizure then!” John spat. “My point is, you _should have called me!”_

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Sherlock came up the rest of the stairs at last and went through the side door into the kitchen. Murray was watching them both over the laptop screen, and Geoffrey had his arms wrapped around John’s waist. Hamish continued to bawl, and John tried to bounce him, but he froze at Sherlock’s next words. “You’re such a bore these days!”

Ice flooded through John's body. He stared at the back of Sherlock’s head. He waited for Sherlock to apologise, or take it back, or at least start on some ramble about how he didn’t mean it like that. Sherlock opened the fridge (newly-stocked) and stared into it, not turning around.

John stroked his eldest’s fringe down. “Geoff, you feeling well enough to go to bed?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Geoff croaked, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. 

“Take your brother, go on.”

“Aw, I’m not tired!” Murray groaned. Geoff grabbed his hand and pulled him off the couch. They walked past both their fathers into the bathroom to brush their teeth, both of them glancing back at John once as they went up. Hamish’s crying deteriorated into sniffles. 

John waited until they were both occupied with fighting over the toothpaste and then went into his bedroom. He laid Hamish down on the bed and tickled him until he was smiling again. He set about pulling Sherlock’s old travel case out of the top of the wardrobe, flicked it open on the bed next to Hamish and began to fill it.

He heard the wolf pack head upstairs and cursed silently when he remembered that Murray still hadn’t had any dinner. Nothing he could do now. Murray had always been his own man, anyway: he would probably just come down and make himself a sandwich if he woke up hungry. 

He listened to Sherlock bustling about in the kitchen. He was still there when John had finished packing his own clothes, along with spares, a blanket and toys for Hamish. 

He put the two-year-old in a warmer coat and a woollen hat, heaved him onto his hip and put the case down while he opened the door. His shoulder was beginning to ache. Sherlock looked up from the kitchen table. He was reading emails about potential cases; John could see the reflection of the computer screen in the microwave. His brows came together in an expression that was more bemused than concerned.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to my sister’s,” John said quietly.

Sherlock stood up very quickly. “John.”

His voice was full of shock and disbelief. John had heard him speak like that only once before, almost fourteen years ago. It had been when John had stepped out of the stalls of a swimming pool, wearing a bomb Sherlock couldn’t yet see under a fur-hemmed jacket. 

“I’m going,” John said quietly. “So don’t start. Just go to bed, and make sure the boys get to school on time.”

“You’re taking Hamish,” Sherlock said, breathy and low, and that same tone had not left his voice. John couldn’t understand how he, good old John Watson, patient and caring John Watson, had willingly done this to another person. To this person, of all people. But then he thought about it, and he could, he really could.

“I’d take them all, but I don’t want to uproot Murray and Geoff like that,” John said heavily. “Make sure they get to school.”

He picked up the case by its handle and went down the stairs, taking them one at a time. He made it as far as the front door and was unhooking his key to 221 from his keyring before he heard Sherlock’s footsteps barrelling down after him.

“Wait!”

“We’re not talking about this now,” John said. He put the key down on the table beside the door with Mrs Hudson’s dried herb arrangement. He did not look round at Sherlock. Hamish's head twisted back and forth between his parents' faces. 

“No, I need to explain, you’re angry, I know, but—but you _know_ me, you know I’m not always—John, listen to me before you—”

“Go to bed, Sherlock,” he still refused to look round. He opened the door and hefted the case.

“John, don’t—!”

John hooked the door with his foot as he went through it, pulling it shut with a snap. His breath poured steamy from his mouth as he went down the front steps, and Hamish made a small noise of complaint into his shoulder. 

John realised didn’t know the bus routes to Harry’s. He’d never even been to Harry’s new place, some nice digs in Dollis Hill, but he had the address in his phone somewhere. He’d have to catch a cab. He had some cash he’d got out at the shops today, so that’d be alright. It felt dishonest, somehow, to use the card linked to their shared account. That was just something that they would have to sort out, he supposed. Maybe with a lawyer.

“Daddy,” Hamish said, looking back at the door of 221b as John headed down the street, his eyes peeled for a glowing, yellow 'TAXI' in the darkness.

“I know, little man. I know,” John murmured to him.


	4. headlights

It was near midnight on the crossover between Monday and Tuesday, and John was lying on his sister’s guest bed and crying about what he had done. Silently, of course, with his hand over his mouth to make absolutely sure. Hamish was asleep on the bed beside him, flat on his back on his favourite blanket with Harry’s orient-patterned duvet pulled over him. The room had blinds instead of curtains, and every now and then a car rolled past outside and cast bars of headlight across the ceiling. 

John closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking. He couldn’t. He had lost that ability during his years with Sherlock Holmes, like he lost any chance of being a surgeon when the bullet dug deep through bone and snapped the subclavian artery like a pin through a water balloon. He was fifty-one years old now and he felt worn as stone steps. Had all the changes in his life been nothing but losses, here and there? Like chipping a sculpture out of the rock? His hair was going grey, his never-impressive height was dwindling, he had forgotten half of the medical training he received in his twenties. 

Hamish snuffled in his sleep. No, it hadn’t always been losses. He had three children. He had learned how to burp a baby and all the scientific names of the dinosaurs. He could pick a lock like a champ, too, and was once given a pair of curly silver cufflinks by a woman whose husband was stabbed in their bed while she was at a conference (John was the one who promised her that Sherlock Holmes would solve the case, so somehow she gave John credit for it when Lestrade arrested a jealous neighbour). 

Sherlock had rung twice in the taxi. John ignored the buzzing of his phone. Then had come the messages: “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS – SH” and “YOU’RE NOT BEING FAIR – SH” and “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I’VE DONE – SH”. Incensed, John switched the phone off and stuffed it deep into the pocket of the travelling case. 

Perhaps Sherlock was right. Perhaps John should have talked to him before he left, spelled out his grievances and given Sherlock a chance to defend himself. The problem was that if they were going to solve this by _talking,_ John felt that Sherlock was at rather an unfair advantage. Sherlock was better at talking. 

If John had stayed, he knew, Sherlock would have talked him around and then nothing would have changed. 

Harry had let him in without hesitation, but a wee bit of a chiding. She lived alone (“Never getting married again, I swear,” she’d told John when she dropped into Baker St last Christmas, “Oh falling in love, sure, I can’t help doing that on occasion. But no way am I ever sharing my life with someone else, not again.”) But she was cheerful whenever John saw her. In the rusty-voiced, spray-haired, ripped-stockings way that Harry expressed cheer. Her clothes had cruised towards the professional over the years but had never been tasteful, and her salary had grown to a comfortable threshold that bought the house on Dollis Hill and all the luxuries a single lady desired. She always told John she was on the wagon still, but without meeting his eyes. He in turn told himself, _’She’s a big girl, she doesn’t appreciate me nagging’_ and left it at that.

“I knew this would happen,” Harry said, marching around her orange-lino kitchen in a hot pink, satin dressing gown, making him a coffee from the retro-style grinder that must have cost a fortune. He’d said he didn’t want any caffeine this late. “He’s such an arse, that man. And a face like your cum was lemon juice.”

“Don’t, Harry,” John said, massaging his temples. He would have added _not in front of Hamish_ but last time he’d made that request, Geoff and Murray had come back from a trip with Auntie Harry with a nine new ways to say _cunnilingus._ “It’s too early for bitching.”

“It’s never too early for bitching, that’s something you never learned,” Harry plonked the unwanted coffee down in front of him, tightened the belt of her dressing gown and sat down in the closest chair. 

She swung her legs one across the other. Her toes were painted black, each with a neon-blue stripe down the centre, even though John was sure there were laws against painting your toenails over the age of forty-five. Sometimes he honestly wondered if he or Harry were adopted. She patted his knee, and took a sip of her own coffee. “You need to let the bitch out. You’re too nice, John.”

“I’m trained to shoot people for a living,” John frowned.

“But do you? No. You run around after Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes, doing Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes’ washing and raising Sherlock-Fucking-Homes’ sons and I’m bloody glad you’ve finally had enough of it.”

“Sherlock fucking,” Hamish said from the armchair in the corner (it was shaped like a giant V-for-peace sign. He stuck his hand in his mouth and smiled at John, who felt too tired and beaten-down to scold him. 

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs until he saw stars. “I think I’d better just go to bed and get some sleep, Harry.”

“Course. Oh, this coffee was stupid of me, wasn’t it,” she picked up John’s cup, eyed it and then began to drink it. She got up and waved her finger. “I forgot, no caffeine for breastfeeding fathers,” she belted out a laugh that made John’s head throb. 

“I never—” oh, screw it, he wasn’t rising to her bait. 

“I’ll rustle up some sheets for the guest room. Do you want flannelette? I bought them but I decided I hate them,” she picked up Hamish and held him above her head. “Do you like flannelette, Hammy? Do you? Oh, who’s my favourite nephew, you are,” Hamish giggled hysterically as she whirled him around and headed down the corridor without waiting for John’s answer.

He wanted to tell her to stop getting Hamish excited or he’d never go to sleep, but instead he put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was Sherlock.

And now he was lying awake and it was still all he could see. Sherlock mixing cocoa in their kitchen, brooding over the sight of London out the window while the spoon went clink-clink-clink around the rim of the mug. Sherlock’s face when he held Hamish for the first time, a face John had seen only twice before but each time was the most beautiful expression in the world. Sherlock in the bath, his elbows over the edge and a smirk on his face as John discarded his shirt and stuck his hand under the bubbles to the elbow, leaning down to kiss him. Sherlock pacing, furious because the school wouldn’t put Geoffrey two years ahead, refusing to calm down until John snatched his sleeve as he passed and told him Geoffrey had friends in his class he will miss. Sherlock with buckshot in his ribs as a gift from the brother of that bastard he put away in ’08, bleeding onto the street and John wasn’t there because John is always at home with the boys, John didn’t even find out until an hour later when Lestrade finally called from the hospital. Sherlock in an incredibly well-cut, dove-grey suit, putting aside his sibling feud long enough to play Mycroft’s best man when his brother finally convinced his assistant to make him an honest man. Sherlock teaching Murray calculus, both of them lying on their stomachs with their shoes off and their ankles crossed behind them. 

Sherlock going down on John on that rickety bed they kept meaning to replace. Sherlock telling Geoffrey not to listen to John because John wasn’t as clever as Daddy, the fucking sod. Sherlock promising John that when he went to Vegas one day to count cards he would bring back millions of American dollars in a suitcase and they would have a dozen more children and live in a mansion in Chelsea. Sherlock staring into the newly-stocked fridge and not taking back that word. _Bore_ , Geoffrey could no doubt provide alternative meanings, _’to pierce‘_ or _’to drill‘_ and even _’Past tense: to support or endure’_ and oh yes, John fitted that one to a tee. But that word was like a puncture in John’s lung with his hopes rushing out with the air, like a thousand holes in the foundations of Baker St until it crumbled beneath their feet. 

John rolled onto his side and stared at Harry’s wallpaper, and tried to think wallpapery thoughts until he went to sleep.


	5. oxycodon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely comments!

Most people awoke slowly, easing themselves through morning rituals and dark brown stimulants before their brains were nimble enough for complex tasks. Sherlock, for instance, often sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear and socks, blinking at the wall, for up to half an hour in the morning before he even spoke his first word (usually “teaplease”). Years in the army had left John with a sleep switch that flicked off in a moment (and, if there was no emergency, could often flick back on with hardly any disturbance to his rest). So when the muffled ringing of a phone wriggled down into his unconscious mind, off went the switch. He lay still for a few seconds, listening until the ringing stopped without really processing why it might be there in the first place. It couldn’t be his phone. His phone was turned off and sitting at the bottom of his bag. He was about to drop back into sleep when he heard Harry’s footsteps outside the door, and the handle turning.

“John?”

He pushed up onto his elbow. Harry’s voice was zombified but clear.

“John, it’s Geoff.”

John sat up properly and swung his legs over the bed, holding out his hand. His watch on the bedside table told him it was twenty-five to two in the morning. Harry passed the phone over and John put it to his ear.

“Geoff? You okay?” it came out as a squeak and he cleared his throat.

“I’m fine,” his eldest son’s voice was alert but John could hear a waver in it. Geoffrey was not a voice-wavering kind of kid. He was usually the mellow patience to Murray’s dramatic flair. 

“What’s up?” John shot up a quick prayer that this was just Geoffrey being an insomniac, needing to talk about what had happened. But no such luck.

“Murray’s run off.”

John balled his empty fist in Harry’s flannelette sheets. His sister was watching his reaction and moved a little closer, perching on the bed next to him and putting her hand over his clenched fingers.

“When? Do you know where he’s gone?”

“He didn’t leave a note or anything. I think he waited until I was almost asleep because I remember him moving around, but I thought he was getting a drink or something. But I woke up just now and he’s gone. His schoolbag too.” 

“Right,” John closed his eyes, took a breath. “Has Daddy gone after him?”

“Daddy doesn’t know yet.”

“You didn’t wake him?”

“I called you, Dad,” the waver in Geoffrey’s voice was becoming tears. “You’ll know what to do.”

“Okay, Geoff, don’t worry,” John stood up as quietly as he could, reaching for his pants in the neat pile of clothes he’d left in the corner. He began to put them on one-handed, then held the phone with his cheek to pull them up fully. The movement stretched the bad shoulder, which gave a warning throb. “Go into our room, wake Daddy and tell him what you just told me, but stay on the line. I’m getting dressed right now.”

“Okay.”

He held the phone out to Harry, whispering, “Tell me if he comes back on.”

Even in the dark in an unfamiliar room, he was dressed head to toe in moments and equipped with the vitals – wallet, watch, pocket torch, phone (he turned it on to find two voicemails from their landline in the last five minutes) and key ring (221b key left behind, dammit, why’d he need to make that spiteful gesture?). 

“John, he’s back,” Harry passed him the phone. 

“Geoff?” John went and knelt to check Hamish was still sleeping soundly and then moved out into the hall with Harry in tow.

“Daddy won’t wake up.”

John’s entire spine went rigid and his heart tripled its rhythm. “What do you mean?” oh, no, Sherlock would never, he could throw a tantrum when he wanted to but Sherlock would never, ever leave his children—

“He’s real sleepy, he just mumbled and rolled over.”

Oh, thank God. Thank God. _Think, think John, some of that consulting detective genius must have rubbed off on you._

“Ok, Geoff, have a look around the bed, is there anything a bit funny?”

Two seconds of heart-wrenching silence, and then a rustle and Geoffrey returned. “Yeah, he’s got a box of something by the bed. OxyNorm.”

Brand name of oxycodone – painkillers, opioid derivative. There had been a few left over from when Sherlock caught the buckshot revenge and was recovering at home. Sherlock had been very keen on them, and John should have thrown the leftovers out. Stupid.

“Talk to him, Geoff, ask him how many he’s taken,” John buried his hand in his hair, squeezing his eyes shut. How many of the damn pills had there been left? Six? Twelve? _More?_

“Take my car,” Harry had disappeared into her bedroom and returned with a set of keys on a fob shaped like a turquoise cat. 

Geoffrey’s voice was back. “He’s says only four.”

Good, that was good. Sherlock had just wanted a quick, numbing fix – this wasn’t some unexpected urge to self-harm. John hadn’t realised he was holding his breath until he let it out in a whoosh. “Okay, can you convince him to sit up?”

The phone crackled and Geoffrey became muffled and distant as he spoke to Sherlock. “Daddy! Daddy, sit up. Dad’s on the phone. Daddy, come on, this is important.”

John waited, and waited, and Geoff finally said frantically, “He’s too _sleepy.”_

“Put the phone against his ear,” John said firmly. He took a couple of steps into the kitchen, shutting the door so that there were two doors between him and Hamish. Harry was still hovering nearby, her hand to her mouth and the car keys clutched in her fist. John waited a couple of seconds until he heard the cordless stop moving, and then he said, loudly but not at the top of his voice, “Sherlock, wake up. Get out of bed,” he waited, heard a low mumble of his own name. “It’s John. Sherlock _get out of bed.”_

Then he could only wait once more as he heard movement, Sherlock’s voice and Geoff’s mingling together in the distance, and finally his partner speaking properly into the phone. Not quite awake by the sound of it, but at least aware. “John.”

“Murray’s run off. We need to find him.”

“What?” Sherlock’s voice slurred. “Where’s he gone?”

“We don’t know,” John was working to keep his voice calm. “I’m going to take Harry’s car and come right over there, okay? With any luck he’s walking to find me and I’ll see him on the way. If not, be ready to go.”

He hung up the phone and put it down and Harry’s kitchen bench.

His hands were not shaking.

\---

Geoffrey opened the door for him. His eldest was in PJs, dressing gown and slippers, and except for a little redness around his eyes he looked like a count or an earl dressing for casual guests; John was pretty sure he’d even combed his hair. He couldn’t believe how very Holmes his sons were. John put his arm around his shoulders and hurried him upstairs.

Sherlock was on the sofa, fully dressed with his head in his hands. He raised it with what looked like great effort as John came in, and then stood up quickly.

“I didn’t see him on my way here,” John began.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock overrode him at once. The slur was mostly gone from his voice but he still sounded just a little doped up. “I’m sorry, I should have heard him on the stairs and stopped him leaving, if I hadn’t been pushing the damn pills—”

“Sherlock,” John raised his hand. Geoffrey was slumped against his side. “It’s not your fault. But I need your brain right now. What have you got?”

“It’s Murray, not a murder!” Sherlock rubbed his neck with both hands and his gaze roamed around the flat.

“Get into gear,” John barked.

Sherlock took a breath, “There’s five pounds missing from my wallet. If Geoff figured out you were at Aunt Harry’s, I think Murray would have, too.”

“Her address and number is on the list on the fridge,” Geoffrey piped up.

Sherlock shot him a small smile. “Five pounds isn’t enough for a taxi so he was going to take the bus.”

“But there aren’t any suburban routes running at this time of night,” John pointed out.

“No, but it’s not a route he knows, and the computer hasn’t been used since you—since you left, so he didn’t look them up, he was meaning to check the maps at the bus stop at the end of the street. When he found there weren’t going to be any buses past that stop, he would have gone to the big exchange three blocks away. Well-lit, lots of people and cars to hear him screaming if he got in trouble, he’s not stupid. He would have realised there weren’t the buses he needed from there, either, but by that time he was almost a kilometre to the east of the direct route to Harry’s house. If he decided to walk – and given he didn’t come back here and he knows not to take rides from strangers, that’s probably what he did – he would have used the maps at the exchange to work out the most efficient route. He’s good at remembering maps, he probably won’t get lost.”

“It’s still two hours walk,” John said through gritted teeth. “And you’re assuming he was looking for me. Maybe he’s just angry, wandered off in a huff—“

Sherlock shook his head. “Of course he was looking for you. Trying to make a scene and worry the hell out of us while he’s at it, yes, but he would have left a note if he was doing it for the attention.”

“Can you work out his route from the exchange?”

Sherlock nodded.

“Then we drive up and down it until we find him. Okay?”

“I’ll get a proper coat,” Geoffrey said. 

Before he thought about it John replied, “No, you stay here and get some sleep.”

“No way!” Geoffrey cried, and at the same time Sherlock said:

“But you didn’t want Murray left here on his own.”

John looked at him. Sherlock’s eyes were small and dark beneath his furrowed brows. The hurt in his face was physically present, like a second shadow, like a brand burned into Sherlock’s crinkled features. The pain there was accusing, but only a little. Mostly it was just reflected guilt, like Sherlock was saying _but you made me believe I’d done WRONG._

“I,” John’s throat was suddenly dry. “I overreacted. Or maybe I wasn’t reacting solely to what I said I was reacting to.”

He turned away, found Geoffrey looking at him from the doorway. “I’m still getting my coat,” his son said. He coughed into his elbow and dashed up the stairs.

Harry’s car was an old, red Mazda that was a good size for Watsons but not so much for anyone taller. Sherlock, in the passenger seat, practically had his knees around his ears. He hadn’t looked at John since they’d got in, and only spoke to direct him along the route he’d predicted Murray would have taken. 

“Remember what Murray said this morning about cell phones?” Geoffrey commented from the backseat. “I bet he’s concocted this whole thing just to get one.”

“Well, you can ask him when we find him,” John said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. “After I skin him, of course.”

The car was silent for a few moments. Then Sherlock said, “So what _were_ you reacting to?”

“Can we talk about this later?” John said sharply. “I want to focus on Murray.”

Which was true. The odd thing was, he didn’t feel frightened. Worried, yes, because his son was out in the mad streets of London in the middle of the night, of course he was worried. But against all reason, he felt less shocked and angry and afraid than he had when he’d come home a few hours ago to find the same son alone in the unlit flat. 

At that time, he’d had a flashback to when he was twelve and his mum had gone down to the shops to pick something up for dinner, leaving him and Harry alone in the house. John was supposed to be cooking that night (Mum and Dad lived apart by then and the kids were expected to do their share, though the eventual the divorce would be years down the track). John had cut up an onion, put it in the pan and then gone off to read a book while he waited for the elements on the ancient oven to heat up. He’d forgotten about the onion and the oil he’d slopped around it. He’d come back and found flames shooting two feet into the air and he’d screamed for Harry.

Harry had smothered the fire with a wet tea towel (their mum was no fool, and had raised her kids never to put water on an oil-fire), but there was a black smear of smoke on the plaster ceiling that they couldn’t hide. When their mum came home and realised what had happened she had, to the young John’s great distress, burst into tears that she couldn’t stem for several minutes. What John understood now was that she had been made suddenly and brutally aware of how easily these ordinary, domestic things happened; that her children could have died in the brief half-hour she’d been down at the shops. 

But now? With Murray alone out there, in among the drunks and the rapists and the serial killers? Probably not even dressed in a decent jersey? John felt calm. He felt competent. This didn’t scare him because this was what he and Sherlock did, solved mysteries in the darkness no matter who stood in their way, and they were damn good at it.

He had no idea how much he’d missed it until now. Well, okay, he’d had a bit of an idea. Quite a lot of an idea. But he’d pushed it away and sat on it and not talked about it for so long that it had become less of an idea and more of a constant, pervasive sensation of neurotic discomfort. It sat like a cataract on John’s good sense and forgiving nature, amplifying his paranoias and concentrating his frustrations and grievances. Perhaps it had even been the oxygen to today’s gunpowder situation. 

“Left here,” Sherlock said. As he raised his hand to point, his phone buzzed. John didn’t see the number, but Sherlock’s eyes widened and he hit speakerphone. “Hello?”

“Hello, nutter,” said Sally Donovan’s voice (and John knew in that moment that everything was going to be alright because she had never called Sherlock a freak in front of one of his children). “You noticed you’re missing something?”

“Is he alright?” both Sherlock and John gasped in perfect synchronicity. 

“He’s a right pain in my arse is what he is. I had to call Lestrade at home to get your number, and he did not sound happy about it.”

“Sally, we’re on our way. We’ll be there in ten,” John yelled in the general direction of the phone. They were in a quiet street bordered by rows of tall terrace houses, too narrow for a U-turn. John glanced in his mirrors and then executed a perfect hand-brake donut and sped off the way they come.

Geoffrey yelped and then broke into gales of laughter. Sally had already hung up, presumably rolling her eyes.

\---

“Dad! _Daddy!”_

Murray bolted down the length of the office and threw himself into John’s arms, Sherlock leaning down to enclose them both. Their son was chanting very fast, “Don’t be mad, don’t be mad, don’t be mad…”

“Are you alright?” Sherlock croaked, pushing aside Murray’s fringe, patting him up and down in search of injuries. “Did anyone hurt you? How did you end up here?”

“You are in so much trouble you are going to wish I’d gone for the leash,” John knelt to face him. Murray’s huge, blue eyes were veined from crying and his bottom lip was beginning to demand attention. “But we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Let’s just get home.”

He stood up again. “Thank you, Detective-Inspector,” he held out his hand to Sally, who shot Sherlock a fierce glare as she shook it. 

“Thanks,” Sherlock mumbled, his hands tightening on Murray’s shoulders. Behind them, Geoffrey gave an explosive sneeze that made John jump. He felt the neurotic cataract creeping back into the corners of his mind again, as he wondered if being out in the cold had made Geoffrey more sick. It seemed that now he knew Murray was safe he was turning back into a possessive househusband again. 

“I was walking to Auntie Harry’s. A lady offered me a ride,” Murray sniffed as Sherlock took his hand and they headed for the exit. “She was taking her friends home from partying in town. They were very noisy. She thought she knew where the address I gave her was but she took me to completely the wrong place. Then she got pulled over for speeding and I asked the officer to take me back to the station.”

“Oh, Lord,” John muttered. 

“That was very sensible,” Sherlock told him proudly.

\---

John stopped Harry’s Mazda in the taxi stand outside 221b Baker St. It was now close to three am and the streets on their way home had been dead empty. He switched the engine off and glanced at Sherlock, then turned around to talk to the boys.

As soon as he opened his mouth, Murray cried, “Please come home!”

John found he couldn’t make words work, and swallowed three times until his throat unlocked. “Harry’s watching Hamish. I’ve got to go back and take him off her hands, kiddo.”

“But you don’t want to come back,” Murray said, fumbling to unlock his seatbelt and climb between the seats to throw his arms around John’s neck. 

Geoffrey had been looking away like he didn’t condone Murrays’ outburst, but now he turned to John as well. “I’m sorry we didn’t come to the dinner party. I’m sorry for everything. We’ll help more around the house more, we promise.”

“Geoff, oh, Christ,” John closed his eyes. He squeezed Murray and then peeled him off and sat him back in the rear seat so that he could talk to both his boys at once. “Now you listen to me, both of you. This is not your fault. I love you so, so much no matter what, and I always will. Being a grown-up is just complicated and it’s hard sometimes and I know we want things to be perfect. When you’re an adult you have to learn to accept when they aren’t. _But it’s not your fault_. To me, you both are perfect, okay?”

Geoff nodded slowly. Murray wiped his eyes, gazing down at his feet in the shadowed well between the seats, until John cupped his chin and made him meet his father’s eyes. “Okay?”

Murray nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m going to call the school and tell them you’ll be in late tomorrow so you can sleep in.”

Despite everything, Murray’s eyes lit up, though he refrained himself from cheering.

“And don’t think you’re off the hook for running away,” John added, pointing at him. “No laptop. At all.”

“Until when?” Murray gasped.

“Until next week. Don’t think you can sneak it because I’m not there, I’m trusting you to do as I say. Geoff will tell me if you don’t.”

Murray flumped back into the seat with his arms crossed, but didn’t protest.

Sherlock had remained silent and unmoving throughout this entire exchange, even when Murray had climbed between the seats and bumped against his shoulder. He still wasn’t looking at John, but staring out the windscreen at the lamp lit geometry of Baker Street, all straight lines and box houses. That was what John saw, at least. He had no idea what Sherlock was seeing; probably a more complicated vision of the Terminator’s point-of-view animations in the movie of the same name. It occurred to him that he and Sherlock had never watched any of the _Terminator_ movies together, even though John thoroughly enjoyed all six (even the third). Geoff would probably like them, too. He liked playing shoot-em-up computer games with his friends. It was up for debate whether that kind of violent entertainment was appropriate at Murray’s age, but it seemed mean to leave him out.

It then occurred to John that if he really did move out for good, there would probably never be an opportunity for John to show Sherlock, Murray and Geoff any of the _Terminator_ movies (even the second).

“Give me a couple of days, and then we can talk,” John reached over, put his hand over the loose fist sitting on Sherlock’s thigh and gripped hard for a few seconds. “Will you give me that?”

Sherlock continued to look out the front window, and then he nodded stiffly. He got out of the car, opened the back door for the boys and put his hand on the small of their backs as he herded them up the steps. He took his hand off Murray’s shoulder blades only long enough to unlock the door, and Murray glanced back at John. 

John waved cheerily at him and then, once the door was shut up tight again, started the car and headed back to Harry’s.


	6. deduction

John spent Tuesday entertaining Hamish and looking up custody rights on the Internet, not because he was worried about Sherlock trying to pull that on him (well, not really worried, though he knew Sherlock got some funny ideas in his head sometimes) but just to make sure he knew what they were if the question arose. When Harry got home from work that evening, John tried to have a talk with her, but found that Harry’s opinion on the whole situation didn’t get much more complex than, “Three important things to remember, John: Sherlock is a prick, Sherlock is a prick, Sherlock is a prick.”

“Harry, it’s not that simple. I’ve lived with him for almost fourteen years. I’m still in love with him.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Because you don’t like cock,” John said, rolling his eyes. He was sitting in the giant-hand-shaped armchair while Hamish ran back and forth between him and his sister, showing off the storm clouds of colour he’d made by attacking pieces of paper with the crayons that Harry had dug out of her wardrobe. 

“So why did you leave him, then?” Harry demanded.

“Because,” John tipped his head back and groaned at the ceiling. “Because I feel underappreciated and I think he’s teaching my children to treat me like an idiot?”

“Gosh, ‘prick’ was really not appropriate, sorry. ‘Infinite arsehat’ would have been better,” Harry said sarcastically, pouring herself another glass of cranberry juice. John hadn’t seen a single bottle of alcohol in the house, which was good. But he really felt like a glass of wine right now. Maybe a whole bottle. 

He grunted. Hamish waddled over and held up what appeared to be an accurate representation of two buckets of yellow and blue paint thrown on a white wall. “Oh, isn’t that pretty? I reckon you’re going to be the artist of the family, Misha,” John gushed at him. 

“Look, you asked my opinion, and I gave it to you,” Harry sighed. She sounded less angry now, and more worried about her baby brother. “I know you need people more than I do, but I wish you’d find some nice guy who’d treat you proper. You deserve that.”

John, feeling argumentative and grouchy, didn’t answer. But the retort at the tip of his tongue was, _I never wanted a nice guy. I only ever wanted him._

\---

He gave Sarah a call the next day and she took him to coffee and let him rant for a long time about almost everything; Sherlock, the kids, Harry’s lack of helpful suggestions, the runaway incident of two nights before, Sherlock again, and also that S.O.B father of Geoff’s friend Toni, who was always looking at John like he walked around in a clown suit with his wobbly bits hanging out. Now _that_ guy deserved all the names Harry could think of. 

Sarah was patient and sympathetic. When John had talked so much that he felt too tired to keep going, she said, “There’s a GP position opening up next month. One of our satellite clinicians is retiring. I’d be happy to give you a reference.”

“Well,” John frowned. “I wasn’t thinking about that, yet.”

“You’ll need something sooner or later, if you intend to move out of your sister’s,” Sarah pointed out. 

He nodded. “Thanks for listening.”

“You’re welcome. We should do this more often.”

John chuckled. “I can’t imagine that’s going to be a lot of fun for you.”

“You never know when I’ll want you to return the favour. I’m as messed up as anyone, John.”

“I doubt that!”

Sarah smiled over her latte. “I was married before Anton, you know. I didn’t want to tell you that. I wasn’t happy and I chose to lie about it for far too long. It wasn’t until Debbie was a year old that I told my first husband she wasn’t his daughter. Now because of my lies and adultery I have a man I love and a wonderful family. Do I deserve it? Maybe not. Messed up, see.”

“Oh, wow,” John said. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a cautionary tale or a good example.”

“Neither,” Sarah said with a soft laugh. “Every couple is different. Talk it out with Sherlock, John, is my only advice.”

On Friday evening, John bought a tub of ice cream and went to 221b Baker St, pushing the stroller and trying not to plan angry speeches in his head. The last thing he wanted was to end up lecturing Sherlock – or worse yet, the wolf pack. He knew he would find himself unable to stop. 

He had reclaimed his key on the night of the runaway incident, and let himself inside without announcement. Mrs Hudson’s door was open and she waved at him with a beaming smile, seemingly unaware of the reason for his three-day absence. John could hear Sherlock’s violin through the floorboards, playing a speedy improvised set. John folded up the stroller and left it at the bottom of the stairs. He held Hamish’s wrist with one hand and the shopping bag with the other, took a breath and headed up to the flat. He could smell roasting potatoes and something meaty. 

The door was open, but John knocked as he reached it anyway. He saw with a lurch of unexpected disappointment that it was Geoffrey who was sitting on the sofa playing the loose tune. He smiled at his eldest and put Hamish down on the floor.

“That sounds great, Geoff.”

Geoffrey’s absent-minded notes were cut short with a squeak of horsehair on wire. He leapt up, taking care only to lay down the violin, and bolted across the room to hug his father.

“Hello, Dad!” Murray called from somewhere upstairs. 

Geoffrey looked up at him with wide eyes. “Do you know Daddy’s not home? Lestrade called him out about an hour ago. I’m cooking dinner,” he added proudly. 

“What are you cooking?” John asked with only a hint of worry.

“Just oven fries and chops. And I’m paying attention, I promise,” Geoffrey hauled him by one wrist into the kitchen and sat him down, patting Hamish on the head as he went and offloading the ice cream into the freezer. 

Murray came downstairs, still in his school uniform, and bounced into the chair opposite John. “How’s Aunt Harry?”

“Oh, starting to get sick of me,” John smiled. He was unbalanced by the sour anticlimax that Sherlock wasn’t home, but it was coupled with the sweetness of seeing his sons. 

He spent a while asking the boys how they had been going, and trying to distil from their chatter how Sherlock, in turn, had been going. It was hard to tell. School and friends and the newfound freedom of living with the parent who didn’t tell them off for staying up late reading dominated the boy’s perception. Murray said he’d stayed off the laptop as promised, and Geoffrey confirmed it. The middle child then asked if they could eat the ice cream John had brought before dinner (“I’m soooooo huuuuuungry!”) and John said just a little bit so they didn’t ruin their appetite.

Hamish was so excited by the sound of ice cream being served that he ran into the table leg, fell over and began to cry. As John got up to rescue him, he heard footsteps on the stairs and Sherlock arrived in a swirl of black coat. He was closer to Hamish and reached the two-year-old first, lifting him up and clicking his tongue while he swung him around. He finally settled his unsurprised gaze on John. No doubt he had figured out who was in the flat as soon as he walked through the front door.

“Hello,” he said dryly, though his arms tightened around the grumbling Hamish as if he thought John would tear his son out of his arms and storm off without warning. “How are… things?”

“Things are good,” John said mildly. 

Geoffrey and Murray were glancing at each other across their bowls. Geoff said generously, “We can eat these upstairs. We’ll take Hamish.”

John served a small spoonful of ice cream for Hamish and let Geoff lead him upstairs by holding the bowl just out of reach until they got into the top bedroom. Once the door was shut, Sherlock finally removed his coat and sat down at the kitchen table, his legs crossed and one arm draped over the back of the chair.

“So is this the part where we sit down and talk about our relationship and decide we need to communicate more? You lay out your grievances, I point all the ways this has been building up for years and then we decide it’ll be better for the boys’ development if they’re not raised in a household riddled with underlying tension and resentment, so, we make plans to visit a lawyer and arrange the splitting of our assets and a custody agreement we’re both happy with. Probably you taking Hamish and me taking the wolf pack for the weekdays and then swapping over on weekends. We’re both sensible, we’ll put the needs of the boys first,” he finished his monotone speech with a quick tap of his nails on the wooden surface. “How did I do?”

John chewed on the inside of his cheek. He entwined his fingers and set them on the table in front of him. Then he said, “I don’t want to stay at Baker Street—”

Sherlock gave a derisive snort, and John shot him a look that made him keep his mouth shut. He continued, “I don’t think _we_ should stay at Baker Street. It’s too small. The boys should have their own rooms, and we’re too close to town here. Drunks and unsavoury characters whooping outside the window every Saturday night, it’s not healthy. We need to move.”

Sherlock was staring at him. After a moment he said, “Where do… we… get the money for this?”

“Well, for starters, I’m going to go back to work,” John said. “Full-time, too, I hated having to balance half-and-half when Murray was little and Geoff was just starting school. There’s good daycares we can get subsidised for.”

“You don’t believe in daycare.”

“Yeah, well, I don't believe in television, but that doesn't make DVD players a crime,” John chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Maybe I have been too… over-protective. For a long time. Or maybe I'm just addicted to my kids. I think you know how that feels.”

Sherlock said nothing for a few seconds, then he asked, “I meant it, what I said. I don’t want my sons being raised in an unhappy household where the parents secretly dislike each other.”

“Didn’t do me any harm,” John retorted. 

“I didn’t say it did.”

“Then can I do a bit of deducting of my own?” John asked, cocking his head. “Because I don’t think you expected this. When you saw me standing there with my bag you were caught by surprise. I know you, I know your face and your voice, Sherlock. You had no idea I felt that way. Now I’m not spiteful enough to be offended by that, or so arrogant as to think that I can hide my feelings from you. But I do think it means you weren’t looking for the signs. And if you weren’t looking for the signs, it was because you didn’t want to see them. You don’t want this to be the end of us. You’re as much in love with me as you were that day by the pool,” he leaned forward. “How did I do?”

Sherlock folded his arms, an odd gesture for him, and looked at hands of the man sitting across the table from him as if they could reveal the final clue that would bring the solution into reach. Then his eyes flicked up to meet John’s and said quietly. "Spot on, John.”

“Good,” John leaned back and slapped the table with his palm. “ _Now_ we need to talk about grievances and better communication. Things are going to change around here, Mr Holmes.”


	7. home

Poor Mrs Hudson. She had tried to be positive while wishing them well, but she was really going to miss them. John had promised he would bring the boys around to visit when he could, but he knew their lives were hectic so that might not be as often and Mrs Hudson would like. Hamish, who was now almost three and a half, hugged her leg and promised her that when he was old enough he would marry her so she wouldn’t have to live on her own. 

They were moving the first load into the new house, a roomy terraced home that stood right on a street corner. They’d gotten cheap because it needed new carpets, fresh paint and a lot of work in the kitchen to bring it out of the twentieth century. They hadn’t thought they’d be able to afford the deposit by a long shot, and Mycroft stepping in and offering to pay it had nearly sent Sherlock through the roof (“No, you do NOT get to offer us CHARITY, you CONDESCENDING OAF!”). Eventually a friend of Sherlock who John hadn’t met before, who had spent two years in jail before Sherlock exonerated him, had found them a better deal with the bank he worked for. 

Geoffrey and Murray were already fighting over which room they got. John sighed and marched upstairs to break up what sounded like it was rapidly descending into a violent brawl. Sherlock conveniently didn’t follow until John had already scolded Geoffrey for putting his brother in a headlock, “Don’t ever, _ever_ cut off his breathing, Geoff, you could kill him,” and Geoffrey had given his defence, “He bit me! Look! I’m bleeding!”

They ate kebabs over a painting sheet on the floor that night, because all the big furniture would be coming by truck the next day. As he was polishing his off, Murray asked quietly, “Dad, do you ever think you’ll leave again?”

John glanced at Sherlock. The wolf pack had not asked much about that particular hiccough in the year or so since it had taken place. John and Sherlock had tried to explain it to them at one point soon after the fact, but the boys hadn’t seemed too interested in the details. Their parents just kept their fingers crossed that their sons hadn’t taken anything to heart.

“Well,” John cleared his throat and lowered his kebab. “I don’t want to, not at all. So I hope not.”

“Things have been different since then,” Murray said vaguely. 

“Good kind of different?” John asked.

“I guess so.” 

“Why were you unhappy?” Geoffrey cut in. 

Sherlock was watching John very closely now. John thought about it. “Everybody does things other people don’t like, even best friends. I guess instead of telling Daddy when he was doing something I didn’t like, I sat on it and let it bother me. I don’t just put Sherlock in a headlock like you do when Murray annoys you.”

Murray giggled, but Geoffrey’s intense, interrogative expression didn’t change. “But why didn’t you tell him?”

John cleared his throat. “Because I have trust issues,” he said finally. “I’ve had them for a long time, before I even met Daddy. The only time I ever really trusted someone before Daddy was when I was in the war, when it was other soldiers. So maybe I thought that if I categorised everything all ship-shape like in the army, and if I withstood whatever life threw at me like a stoic soldier-Dad, then everything would work out. So I followed all the rules I’d put in my head, and treated this family like it was my job and my duty and like Sherlock was my commander. Which is such a stupid thing to do. Since then I’ve tried to treat you less like that, and more like Sherlock and my two mini-Sherlocks. There’s no rules for that, it’s never been done before, but that’s why I love it.”

“Sherlock-John hybrids,” Sherlock corrected him.

“Hybrid spawn,” added Geoffrey. 

“Alright, Sherlock-John Hybrid Spawn,” John laughed. “But you’re also my Murray and my Geoff. Completely different from anything that’s come before. No rules. So now I’m figuring things out as I go along.”

Geoff seemed satisfied at that. He smiled at his fathers and went back to his dinner.

The wolf pack and the youngest cub were asleep on mattresses and sleeping bags in their new rooms (Hamish was in Geoffrey’s room for now, since he had never been on his own at night). Sherlock and John were wandering around their new abode with the lights off, trying to decide how their meagre furniture was going to fill up all the new space. John was convinced it didn’t matter because three boys were going to easily fill every available surface in junk within the week. Sherlock said this wouldn’t do, because he liked having available surfaces to spread out evidence and make brainstorming boards, and also be available for “other necessities.”

“What kind of other necessities?” John asked, leaning against the doorway into their prehistoric kitchen with his hand on his hip. 

“The fun kind,” Sherlock grinned. John leaned up to kiss him, pulling himself onto tiptoes with the doorframe. Sherlock slumped into the kiss, one long hand sliding around John’s neck and then down the back of his collar. Quite suddenly, Sherlock put his free hand on John’s chest and pushed them apart, still stroking the back of John’s neck with his thumb.

“I know I’m not… I’m not easy to… and I don’t always…” Sherlock said, his brow furrowed.

What John really wanted was to give this room a good ol’ fashioned housewarming, and then maybe give the kitchen one as well, and the lounge, and their new bedroom… but he could see that Sherlock had been dwelling on his insecurities for several hours and needed relief.

“I know,” he said, pressing his lips together in a patient smile. “Believe me, I know.”

“You shouldn’t have to make excuses to the boys for the problems that I—”

“Sherlock, I make as many of my own problems as you make for me,” John husked. “And living with you has taught me not to even perceive those problems anymore. Both yours and mine. That’s why I can’t face any sort of life without you.”

He grabbed Sherlock’s collar and pulled them together again. He put his hand at the base of Sherlock’s spine as if they were entering a waltz and pressed their hips together. His blood pounded in his ears and his skin drank up the warmth of Sherlock, the taut shiver of his muscles under John’s hands. 

_No more rules,_ he promised himself. 

The new house creaked around them in a northern wind, but the children slept soundly on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, everyone! There is a sequel which I will be posting soon, but I hope this ending is satisfying enough for now.


End file.
